Coming back to Wallonia for the first time since a while, the Belgian Grand Prix had a different face with a rainy Saturday, and a sunny Sunday. Injury to Valentin Teillet left Dylan Ferrandis alone to represent Team Rockstar Bud Racing Kawasaki and the French teenager again showed tremendous speed with a second position in qualification and a seventh place in the race.
In order to preserve the track for the races, the qualifying races were cancelled on Saturday and after a free practice session the riders qualified through a timed practice period. That didn’t affect Dylan’s confidence, which was fast on the wet and slippery track; posting the fastest lap time in his third lap, Dylan was leading the series for a long time but finally Van Horebeek grabbed the pole. With a good opening lap in race one Dylan came seventh behind Jordi Tixier, and the two Frenchmen passed each others a couple of time; unfortunately Dylan slides and lost a couple of seconds, and then crashed when another rider hit him. The engine stalled, and Dylan lost too much time in the incident…. His second race was similar, but this time and despite pain in his recently injured wrists he fought stoically forward to seventh place in race two to maintain his top ten world ranking. After three GP’s in a row (France, Portugal et Belgique) the world championship will make a break next weekend before the Swedish Grand Prix.
Livia Lancelot won again the french championship women with 3 moto win and will fly to America this week to race the XGames in Los Angeles end of june.
Dylan Ferrandis: “On Saturday I had a good feeling with the track, and only needed a few laps to get the second position in the timed practice session. The track was very good today, but in the first race I made a small mistake when I was seventh and another rider hit me; I stalled the engine stalled and lost too much time to restart. My second start was not so good, but I fought back to seventh; my wrist was painful again, so I will rest for a few days but we have two weeks before the next GP so I hope for a good race in Sweden.”
Jacky Vimond: “We were pleased this weekend to see Dylan so strong, and he impressed many people with his excellent result in the qualifying session. It was a great performance, and he confirmed his potential on Sunday, even if he didn’t finish the first race. He was strong in both heats, he always improves his results and is now regularly in the top seven for his first GP season; I’m sure that he will be even faster soon. Valentin has to stay at home with his broken left collarbone; we got advices from his orthopaedist, and he didn’t have any surgery. He will probably be back in Latvia.”
